How ONE DESIGNER MADE $25K WITH ONE DIGITAL PRODUCT-AND NO PAID ADVERTISING.

How To Make Money With Digital Products

With her permission, I am sharing the story of how Boise, Idaho based interior designer, Emily Williams Clark, made $25,000.00 with one digital product - and no paid advertising!

The Backstory

I first e-met Emily when she requested to join my Facebook Group, #DesignWealth.

This Group (for interior designers only) contains hundreds of free tips to help interior designers learn how to drive traffic to their websites and blogs so they can generate 24/7 passive income through the digital products ( and affiliate product links within those digital products ) that they have for sale/or can have for sale on their websites and blogs. (It is these digital products that Savour Partnership designs and writes.)

Then, I met Emily in real life, at the National Kitchen and Bath Industry show ( #KBIS2019), because Emily signed up for one of my round table sessions in the #KBISthink space to ask me some questions.

It was there, as I was getting to know her, that she first told me she had made $25,000.00, with one digital design download, without spending one drop on paid advertising!

I was amazed and asked her all about how she did it. The rest of this post will tell you exactly how she did it…so hopefully you will be inspired to try something like it for yourselves.

Emily: thank you for being so generous in giving me permission to share your story!

This is Emily and her husband, Dan. They started Clark & Co. Homes, their Design/Build firm in Boise, Idaho, in 2011 and build exquisitely beautiful custom homes, as you will be able to see on their website which is linked to at the bottom of this post.

EMILY’S STORY OF HOW SHE MADE $25,000.00 FROM ONE DIGITAL PRODUCT - WITH NO PAID ADVERTISING.

Like many of you who might be interior designers reading this, Emily had her interior design photos on Houzz and kept getting asked questions from homeowners like, “What paint color did you use?” “Can you give me the name of the manufacturer of that light fixture?” “Can you please tell me where you got that barstool in the kitchen?” , etc.

Emily realized that many of the homeowners/buyers using Houzz didn’t/don’t know that designers normally charge for that information. Emily WANTED to answer their questions, but soon found the amount of questions she was getting, without homeowners offering to pay her for her expertise and knowledge, was getting overwhelming and she just didn’t have the time to answer all of them.

It was at this moment that a lightbulb went off in her head.

She realized maybe people WERE willing to pay, something, to get the answers they needed, even if they couldn’t afford to hire her for her full service offerings.

At the same time this lightbulb moment occurred, Emily had seen that two of her PINS on Pinterest had gone viral. What does going viral mean?

It means that people on Pinterest liked Emily’s images, and started re-pinning them to their own Pinterest boards for inspiration.

Because Emily had placed a link to her website on each of her Pins, every time someone clicked through the image to find out more about that design, it drove traffic to Emily’s site.

Here’s an image that shows you where to place that link in one of your own PINS. Notice how this example shows an affiliate link placed in the link box, which you can also do on Pinterest, although that’s not what Emily did. (L

Emily put her own website in that box.

So, when people starting re-pinning the image Emily had originally pinned, and other people then re-pinned that image from that pinner’s page, Emily’s pins went viral. And everytime someone clicked on the Pin, it took them to Emily’s website. (Learn how to do that, though, by scrolling down to the bottom of this post to the RESOURCES section).

That’s how Pinterest drives traffic to your website.

Here are the two images, with interior design by Emily, that went viral on Pinterest.

Emily’s lightbulb idea was to create a digital design download, for sale on her website, that answered the questions she was most frequently getting on Houzz, based on the project that she saw go viral on Pinterest!

Pinterest virality on two of her pins + Houzz questions equaled one enormously successful digital download for Emily, with no paid advertising!

And, she made her entry level digital download very, very reasonably priced, but gave her site visitors two more options, as well, if they wanted even more information. In this way, she was able to give everyone what they wanted, and yet still be paid for her expertise and knowledge.

The AMAZING thing? At first, the navigation link to her digital downloads was not even VISIBLE on the top navigation bar of the Clark & Co. website!

So many people were coming to her site JUST FROM PINTEREST, that they found the digital download option simply by luck, by spending so much time on her site looking at her design work that they finally found it and clicked on it - AND PURCHASED!

She made $25,000.00 on one set of digital downloads, for one floor plan, without any paid advertising and without it being visible from the top navigation links on her site, because THAT many people were coming to her site from those viral PINS!

Here’s an example of what Emily’s digital downloads look like. This is from one floor plan, The Heartland, that she and her husband built and designed for a Parade of Homes showhouse in Boise, Idaho.

Emily now has several more digital download options available on her site, all from floor plans she and her husband designed and built as spec homes in their area.

Since not everyone designs and builds spec homes, and since you would not want to do this using a client’s home, you may want to consider renting a space, styling it, photographing it and then creating your own digital downloads based on those images.

Keep in mind the key to Emily’s success was based on these 4 factors:

1. The beauty of her design work captured the attention of the design savvy DIY homeowners on Pinterest.2. The quality of the photography showcased her work to its best advantage. 3. The PINS were linked back to her website. 4. She paid attention to the questions she was getting asked on Houzz and then cross referenced that with her analytics aka as INSIGHTS on Pinterest, available to her because she has a BUSINESS Pinterest account.

This is what Emily’s Pinterest Page looks like, also linked to at the bottom of the post.

TIP: If you have a Pinterest Page for your interior design business, but it’s still a personal account, switch it over to a BUSINESS account so you can see your INSIGHTS (and promote your top performing pins).

This way you will be able to see what PINS are performing well and optimize your Pinterest board layout to showcase them.

Then, arrange the top row of your boards so your most popular boards are showing. Not sure how to rearrange boards on Pinterest? Click on the link at the bottom of the post for those instructions.

So what do you think of Emily’s brilliant idea? Are you ready to try it? Still have questions?

Please leave a comment here, or, if you’re an interior designer, Request To Join my Facebook Group at http://facebook.com/groups/DesignWealth and ask Emily or I your questions in the privacy of the Group!